


let the world hang still

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [12]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied Abuse (Pre-canon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9571796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Fills 21, 22 and 26 for 'the' Humans fanwork challenge on tumblr. (Close/Secret/Build)





	

**Author's Note:**

> if you follow me on tumblr, you've probably already been subjected to these, I'm just transferring them to here because my ao3 account was looking annoyingly under-representative of the amount of Humans obsessing I do on a daily basis.
> 
> here's a few little ficlets I'm posting together because they're quite short. the first one is Leotilda, the second is about Niska and refers to her treatment at the hands of David, so warnings for implied abuse (not graphic). the third is a bit of Laura introspection. enjoy! :)

 

 

 

**close**

They hurl themselves around a corner just in time, hear the running footsteps of their pursuers carrying on straight, apparently not noticing the turning. Breathing heavily, Mattie leans against the wall, wishing the building was lit by more than about six meagre lightbulbs, because their haloes of orangey glow are not the best guides to a safe exit, not when she hasn’t seen a floor plan, and she’s running for her life.

It’s light enough, though, that she can still see Leo, catching his breath too on the opposite side of the passageway. His hand is on his side, and Mattie thinks at first that he must have a stitch from running for so long, but then remembers where his rubbish excuse for a charging point is, and thinks maybe open wounds don’t cope very well with mini-marathons. 

“You OK?” she asks.

He nods, just a twitch of his head, which is leaning back on the wall. “Yeah.”

“That was close,” Mattie observes. “They were almost on us.” 

“Yeah,” he says again. Then, “Sorry, I’m just…” 

He lifts up his shirt to check the bandage, adjusts it just slightly, wincing only a little bit. 

“We should go,” he continues, “Before they work out where we turned off.” 

Mattie glances pointedly at the red pooling into the bandage. 

“’S’fine,” he says, shortly.

“It had better be,” Mattie says, and leans cautiously around the corner. “Coast is clear,” she says, in a low voice, and he follows her out of the passage. They break into a run, not as fast as before, but not slow enough that he’d notice her making allowances. In the midst of everything, she can’t have him catching on.

 

 

 

**secret**

He lets her go. Just like last time, she melts from the room, silent. Aching. She crushes it down inside of her, wanting to bury it in new data, but the hallway is too familiar, it can’t offer the sort of sensory overclock she’s looking for. She’s never drawn breath before, but she finds herself needing air, needing outside, where the landscape changes with the wind and she can think of something new.

She sails through the house as though on a current, propelled. The door that leads out into the grounds is unlocked. Across the open lawn, she can see Mia, sitting under the tree. Her back is pressed against the old, worn trunk, and her knees are folded to prop up her sketch book. From here, Niska can’t see what her sister is working on - her current view, or something imagined? Remembered? 

Last time, she had walked and walked to the edge of the estate, until the trees tapered off into grassland again, then the fence, then the road. If she had expected the walking to help, she had been disappointed. Niska can’t really remember what she’d expected, what she’d been thinking, just that it was easier to step and step and step and step and step than to let the world hang still. 

Eventually, though, you always have to stop.

It gets so that you can’t see the point in starting.

Niska crosses the lawn in a straight line, direct to the spot next to Mia, and folds herself under the lowest branches. The leaves split the sunshine into a thousand splinters, making speckled shadows on the ground in front of them, beautiful fractures. Mia turns her head, smiles. “Hello, Niska.” 

Niska lets a smile run in return, leaves the line of code to linger. She doesn’t care how long it stays, so long as it guards her secret. 

Mia goes back to her drawing. Even now, Niska cannot tell what it is. Perhaps, in time, the lines will come together in a meaning. She wonders if she has the will to wait.

 

 

 

**build**

At first it was just white lies and evasions, the foundations she laid when people asked why she wasn’t going home to family over Christmas, why there were no photos in the frames on her bookshelf. _Oh, we’ve never bothered much with Christmas_ , she’d say, gritting teeth over echoes of Tom’s delighted laughter, tearing ravenously at wrapping paper. He’d received a toy car, on his last Christmas Day. Irony slams brakes, too late. _Yes, I really must get something developed_ , Laura would murmur, making a mental note to bin the empty frames she’d bought in a moment of weakness, a desperate bid to make a home out of the bare room she lived in outside of lectures. She had precious little to call keepsakes. Precious little from before she was here, as if she hadn’t lived at all.

But once the vague brushes have dried out, she begins building: a new self, Laura the orphan, the unattached: the loss of her mother has a detailed backstory, she researched the illness, knew all the terms. Nobody ever pressed so close, but she knew the hospital this mother had died in, knew where she was buried, what date, what flowers she’d like to put on the grave, if she ever got chance to go, but oh, isn’t life so busy? Bit by bit, Laura builds up a truth that is new, and brings sympathy in spades, “You poor thing, and so _young_ , too… Your mother would be proud if she could see you now…”

Such kind words, still so hideously untrue at first. But she starts believing them. By the time Joe appears by her side, she is so married to the story that she doesn’t see them as lies any more, just a building, architecture so exquisite even she can’t tell the walls are paper, even though her fingers remember the folds. 

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to name her after your mother?” Joe asks, stroking the tiny head, his eyes shining. “Rosa, wasn’t it? A little tribute.” 

Laura shakes her head. Her daughter will be raised in this half truth, which is bad enough. She doesn’t need to bear it on every school-jumper label too. “I still prefer Matilda.”

Baby-steps at first, but now giant strides of reinvention, brick on brick on brick, a sturdy wall around the part of her that still whimpers, _mummy, he ran out in the road, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t see._ These days, she can barely hear it.

 

 

 

 


End file.
